Just for the record it wasn't kopa who interviewed me at least. Richard asked me some questions via email and i answered. I tried to lean towards general info about the game, instead of world cup where I could. As an insider I don't understand why the fuzz about world cup and not write an article about more interesting things like the progress in internal lev styles and wr times. A good story writer could really make amazing story out of internals (a bit like king of kong document if you've seen it)
Heres the interview, it can also serve as the wc7 winner interview:
How do you feel about being crowned Elasto Mania world champion? Were you surprised at your first-place finish?
Well, I am happy to have won Elasto Mania World Cup 7 of course, but our community doesn't typically call World Cup winners as world champions. We have many contests in elma community and World Cup is just one of them. Sure it's probably the most serious one of external contests. I guess you could call it the elma olympics because the cup is organized so rarely, heh. Also, there's certain legacy to World Cup. When I joined the scene in 2003 World Cup 4 was on and I of course get nostalgic thinking about those old times. For that reason I feel like it's a nice achievement to win the cup.
Before the cup I had just had a 6 months break from the game and I started playing the cup without any expectations, so yes it was a surprise that I won. This was probably the key to success. I just tried to be consistent and do good result in every event, even if I didn't enjoy the ongoing event. Being consistent is definitely important in cups, you won't win if you win the first 10 events and skip the last 5 because you got bored. It's important to keep going on even when feeling bored, if you really want to be the first in overall results.
(Elasto Mania contests could be divided into internal and external categories. Internals are the very original built in levels that have been competed on for nearly 20 years. There are 54 internal levels. The neverending internal contest in my eyes is the absolute top and elite contest. If you can get a world record on one of the 54 levels you are elite and are either very skilled or very determined, or a mix of both. Probably determination is the most important attribute to have.
External contests could simplistically be divided into battles and cups. Battles are something people play everyday, all the time. For every cup event / battle a new level must be created. Cups are organized every now and then, and World Cup is the most serious one. Battles are typically 10-60min in length and cup events 3-7days)
How long have you been playing Elasto Mania? What has kept you around so long? And how'd you get so good at it?
I started playing in spring 2000, before that I had played action supercross since 1997, which is almost the same game as elma, but with a few physics changes. I've had a few breaks from the game but never longer than a few months. The complexity of the game draws me back. Only very recently I've started feeling like we are not finding new things anymore, although chain pop bug by bene is a relatively new invention, found over 15 years after the release of the game, although we still haven't proven if it's posible without tool assistance.
I guess I got good at elma because I've played probably over 20 000 hours total, I always really liked the game and I'm prone to getting obsessed at one thing at a time and not caring about the rest of the world around me.
Tell me about your World Cup 7 strategies. You tackled it very differently to previous cups, right? How did you approach the events this time? Why the change? I saw you mentioned TASing in a few of the post-event interviews. Is that important to your approach?
Correct, I had a different strategy. Or probably the correct way to say it is: for the first time I had a strategy
. I tried to play 1-3h every day even if I wanted to be somewhere else. There were days I wanted to play and there were days I didn't want to play, but in the end I just tried to play that damn 1-3h. Also I found it important to play every day, because sleeping helps on learning. If you try to pack 15hour play session just before the event ends you just dont get as good results as spreading the playtime on every day.
I don't have any good reason to give for changing the strategy or actually applying one. I just tried something new randomly and it worked out. TASing is very common nowadays, it's just a superior way to find styles. Previously we had to create training levs which wasnt too bad either. But the key difference is that with a tool you can save bike state during the ride so you can load the ride and continue it with the correct velocity and angles, while in a train lev you always start stationary and if your train lev is badly built (provides unrealistic velocity to the part you want to practice) it can turn out to not help at all or in worst scenario make you learn the part wrongly.
There is also one more important thing to say about world cup in general and try to give you a better idea why I actually did so much better this time: There simply haven't been many world cups and previously there were other things to do. This time the timing of the cup was perfect for me. World cup 4 in 2003 I joined half way in (oh well I was too noob back then also). World cup 5 in 2005 I was too hooked with world of warcraft to do well, World cup 6 in 2013 I was too hooked with path of exile release to do well. This time there were no other games interfering.
Which level/event was your favourite? Why?
It is very difficult to choose a favourite and this is of course very personal thing but I'll go for 704 by skint0r. The lev just happened to provide me the most magical feeling among all levs. There were some very neat weird gravity routes that were a bit slower than the eventual winning route. Why some levels feel better than others is a very delicate matter and cannot be explained, skint0r is just a good level designer and that's it. He personally greatly disliked his own level though
typical elma player personality I guess.
Conversely, was there a level that you just struggled to get any enjoyment out of? I know some players were unhappy about the presence of a gravity level, for instance.
Yes I struggled with 709 by insguy all the way. I just don't like overly smooth levs with very high vertex density / amount. I prefer levs with long line segments (at least 2 wheel radius length or so), but this is just a personal thing.
Sune also mentioned that you submitted a few levels for consideration that weren't picked. Is there anything noteworthy about these? Are you more interested in playing or in designing levels?
Nah my level designing is very primitive. I make ugly and random levels. They are sometimes good, but they are raw and ugly. Hit or miss I guess
I'm definitely mostly a style innovator/finder in elma, there are better players than me when measured in raw skill, but I think not many are better at innovating tricks if any. Sometimes I try to innovate with levels too but it's quite rare nowadays.
This was your first world cup playing on a team rather than on your own. How much of a difference did it make for you? Did you learn from or discuss much with your teammates?
Having a team for once was certainly a key factor to success and I should be ashamed for not mentioning it before. You always miss something on your own and it feels like the more active team you have the less "holes" your final route will have. We discussed a lot with team members, we had our own server on discord for sharing ideas and recs.
How do you come up with your more creative tricks and routes? Like one I thought was cool when I looked through the replays was in event 8 when you went up the island with leaves on it while upside down and in reverse — in order to gain momentum for a roll back down to swing and spin across to the next area. (Although I'm not very good at Elma, so maybe that's easier and more obvious than I thought.)
I guess it comes from extreme experience and a lot of testing styles to find creative tricks and routes. I do seem to have a good intuition in trying just the right things first and in that way saving testing time. But I do miss styles often too, we all do
During the cup I was amazed more than once how people played completely differently than me but got almost the same times. I guess it just shows how complex game elma is. Sometimes I get the feeling that if you just polish your route and styles in a complex level to a maximum(play dozens of hours) it will be fast enough to compete on the top. A bit like specializing.
What moments were the highlights of World Cup 7 in your mind?
For me 708 was a top highlight in every way, because I've for a very long time wanted some tricky levs into the cup. Before we would just have normal levels and a pipe. But this time we had normal levels, a pipe, and a hongy uphill (yes we really call some levels like that, I guess it could be translated to "Uphills and hangs", or in this case it was more of a "Uphill with hangs"). To test player skill in bigger variety is a move to the right direction. Winning the event with such a large margin felt very special.
Seeing winning replay 702 was very special also. The spin in the end was just ridiculously nice
In general those moments when you got really surprised are the top highlights and things you'll remember. Another cool thing from the cup was start trick in 711. Very simple trick but our team just couldn't find it
Do you have any estimate as to how much time you spent playing the levels for this world cup?
Probably 150-200hours. Sune would be able to give the exact answer though because he has the access to the database
Although there was some time spent offline too with tools to test styles which isn't recorded in database.
What would you say are the key ingredients to success in an Elasto Mania World Cup?
Depends what success means. If you want to win you need skill (5+ years practice, or 2+ years if you're Spef), determination and consistency. To get good result like top20 you just need consistency and determination.
